#Zenhabits in the dark, to reach the higher self The Obstacles What gets in our way to dealing with insecurities? There are obstacles littering the path. There are old wounds that have never healed. Some of the obstacles that get in the way: Past criticisms. If a parent or other relatives criticized us while we were growing up, or if we were bullied, we’ve probably internalized that. I’m lucky that my mom always seemed to accept me as I was, but my dad didn’t. He had his own insecurities, but those would manifest as criticisms of me. Those criticisms stay in my head, but have died down in recent years because of work that I’ve done (more on this below). Still, they may never completely go away. A negative self-image. When people criticize you over the years, you start to criticize yourself. And all this criticism, along with unfavorable comparisons of yourself to others, results in a self-image that isn’t so great. It doesn’t matter if the reality doesn’t meet this self-image … we can be competent, brilliant, and beautiful, but if we have an image of ourselves that is ugly, dumb, and a failure, we will act according to that image. Needing approval. When someone gives us approval, that’s great! We feel we are worthy, and beautiful. But the problem then becomes that we need more approval to keep this self-image, and we fear not getting the approval because then this great self-image will go away. We become stuck in a cycle of needing constant approval, and fearing disapproval. We read into everything that everyone says and does, in real life and on social media, in terms of approval or disapproval. This becomes a fearful cycle of need. Lack of trust. We learn not to trust other people to stick with us, to accept us, to see our side of things as understandable. This is trained in us over the years as people do things that we think of as abandonment or rejection. We stop trusting in the moment to turn out alright. Images in social media & the media. We compare ourselves to the hot people we see on Instagram or other social media. We compare ourselves with the hot people in movies, TV, magazines. These images are meant to sell us, but the way they sell u https://www.instagram.com/p/B7MTI2jjJUd/?igshid=j6lgjz6d7wtt
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